The invention relates to a method for sorting postal articles on automatic sorting devices according to the preamble of claim 1.
In the postal services, the distribution of the postal articles is carried out divided up into distribution areas. Each distribution area has a distribution center, in which the postal articles are sorted to the necessary sorting depth as far as the distribution order for a delivery person. The postal articles entering from the first time from the customers are firstly read in the distribution center, sorted in accordance with distribution areas and then dispatched to the distribution centers of the relevant distribution areas or, in the case of postal articles which merely have to be distributed within this distribution center, are finely sorted to the necessary sorting depth.
By using FIGS. 1 and 2, this sequence will be explained in more detail according to the prior art. The incoming postal articles, for example letters, packets, periodicals and the like, are pre-sorted in one or more sorting devices to the various distribution areas 1. For this purpose, the address is read online, firstly with an automatic OCR reader and, if necessary, with the aid of online video coding. In the process, of course, that part of the address which identifies the distribution area (post code or zip code) must be read unambiguously 2. If this is not the case, then an identification (ID tag) is applied (as a sticker or printed on directly) and the postal article is sorted 3 into a special sorting compartment (re-feed compartment). These postal articles are then video coded offline 4, and if the result is not satisfactory, are video coded again. The postal articles are then pre-sorted in an additional pass 1.
In the case of the postal articles that can be sorted to the distribution areas, a check is then made as to whether the address has been read completely 5 for the required sorting depth, for example down as far as the delivery person""s route. If yes, the postal articles are deposited in one or more sorting compartments for the appropriate distribution area 6. If no, the postal article is given an identification, if it does not yet have one, and is likewise deposited in this sorting compartment.
Before the postal articles from this sorting compartment are subjected to fine sorting in accordance with the required sorting depth, the incompletely read postal articles must be video coded offline with the ID tags, that is to say, in particular in the case of the postal articles which remain in this distribution area, there is little time for video coding, so that the number of video coding stations has to be increased.
The invention is therefore based on the object of providing a generic sorting method in which the time interval available for offline video coding before the fine sorting is increased.
The additional time for video coding is obtained by the postal articles, during pre-sorting in accordance with the distribution areas, being sorted for each distribution area into final locations, for example sorting compartments, for already completely read postal articles and into final locations for incompletely read postal articles and not, as hitherto, completely and incompletely read postal articles mixed. This makes it possible to sort the completely read (OCR read and/or online video coded) postal articles finely at once and to use this time for the offline video coding of the incompletely read postal articles.
For example, it is advantageous to transport the pre-sorted postal articles subdivided into completely read and incompletely read postal articles to the distribution centers of those distribution areas in which the transport time is less than the time period for the fine sorting of their local, completely read postal articles. In each distribution center, the fine sorting of the incompletely read postal articles to be video coded offline is then carried out only after the fine sorting of all the separately sent, completely read postal articles. As a result, a further additional gain in time for the offline video coding is achieved.
It is also advantageous to carry out the fine sorting successively on the same sorting devices, in order to keep the number of sorting devices as small as possible.
In order to implement the sorting processes in the shortest possible time, it is advantageous to carry out the fine sorting in parallel on different sorting devices.
In order to obtain additional time for the offline video coding directly before fine sorting, in the case of parallel processes, that is to say fine sorting carried out on different sorting devices, the local postal articles completely video coded for a respective second pre-sorting pass/re-feed pass are advantageously carried out directly to the fine sorting.